SEO Journey Primer

With all the talk about our new “Rock the Social” training courses there are some subjects we are not covering. The reason we are not going to cover some courses as they take too much time for a 4, 8, or even 40-hour course. One of those courses is search engine optimization (SEO). We will continue to cover search engine optimization in these articles to continue that education process for those that wish to do everything on their own.

Search engine optimization is a group of techniques to the highest results possible on the search engines. Each item we’re going to list below are powerful. Together they can help you achieve greatness. These are a few of the high-level 30,000 foot items that you need to think about when it comes to search engine optimization.

META Information

Behind the scenes of every website is meta information. The meta information contains information about your website. The internet has progressed so has meta information. Today this old information is still around and there is a new kid on the block. This new kid is structured meta data. With structured meta data there is a lot more information that can be given to the search engines to make your site more relevent.

Content Writing

The first part of SEO is having high-quality content that answers the questions your visitors have. As you write content it needs to be written in a way that is engaging and makes your visitors to want know more.

Part of content writing is a constant change of content that will benefit your users. A great way of having a constant influx of content is by having a blog where articles are written for your visitors to add value to their lives.

User Interface

The user interface to your website plays a lot to how a user interacts with all the elements of your website. When the elements work harmoniously together your users will stay on your website longer and interact with it.

Mobility

We see a constant move toward mobile. Our lowest site has a 10% mobile while others are in 70-80% range. Mobile and tablet devices are more important each day.

Security

A key part in Google’s strategy is to secure the entire Internet. The old call was to have SSL which has been proven to be not as secure. That is okay though as there is a new encryption method in town called TLS. Even sites that do not take credit cards still have contact forms and other forms of input and having this information encrypted protects your users.

Security is also not just about that all important “lock” on your website. You need to keep the information on your site updated and secured. Having automatic updates on could make your site more insecure than not updating at all. The reason for this is some updates could incorporate new known vulnerabilities.

Page Speed

The load time of your website is critical to how many users visit and want to stay on your site. Sites that take too long to load will make your visitor want to leave and not stay on your site if you would like them to.

Images Size and Alternate Text

As stated previously page speed or load time is crucial. Having images that are too large will slow the user experience and lower your results within the search results. Images that are optimized by file sizes the text that identifies the images needs to be clear and concise. When it comes to the alternate text think of it as a quick “elevator sales pitch” about the image.

Broken Links and Scripts

We see this all too often. Sites will have links that no longer work or have scripts/modules on them that produce errors on their site.

Analytics

Analytics will play a core part in your SEO strategy. This will range from seeing where people go, what pages they leave, what sites they are coming from, as well as what they type in the search engines. If you have good analytics you can see where they are clicking on your page, how they are filling out the forms on your website, and a lot more.

Using your analytics, you can see what is and is not working and adjust monthly so that the information that you are presenting is hitting the widest possible audience.

Conclusion

There are a lot of key areas to look at when it comes to your search engine strategy. Each item we’ve listed is only a small subset of what needs to be done on a weekly basis. Not all you need to do will happen each week. The key is that you should allocated 8-12 hours per month to your search engine strategy once you have a solid handle on it. When you first start out double or triple that number as you will need ramp-up time as well as continual training time to stay aware of the latest changes that Google, Bing, and other search engines are bringing out each month.

John Marx

John has been an entrepreneur and pusher of all things “normal”. He was brought up where a handshake is as good as any word and even more important than any legal speak. John believes in giving back and giving people more than they expect. This is the foundation and basis of JM2 Webdesigners & Marketing. The prices will shock you, the amount you get will shock you even more, and the skills his entire team brings will completely amaze. He has built a team of experts that are talented, young, and efficient. Each one has the characteristics of the company in wanting to see a small business grow and each one goes above, and beyond which makes John beyond proud of them.

So why is John considered the “Code Ninja”. It’s isn’t because people fear ninja’s (they should). They will fight until their last breath defending, achieving the mission, and helping (in this case small businesses). John believes in very surgical strikes to help a business grow using agile methods that change rapidly, in ways people don’t expect, and with a relentless passion to achieve greatness.

Valparaiso Web Design Mission Statement

JM2 Webdesigners & Marketing provides each client a custom developed solution to meet their business needs. Dynamic and creative solutions for marketing, web design, software development, social media, photography, video, and visual branding. Achieving excellence in an honest and ethical manner.